This has nothing to do with your favorite subject and mine - digital ads - or does it!? LinkedIn went public and is now worth $5 or $6 billion more than what it was the day before (now $8.9 billion) as the opening day stock price closed at $90 for the business networking company. The Business Insider's Henry Blodget is apoplectic about the bankers on the deal. The WSJ has declared a bubble. The NY Times notes LinkedIn's stock price isn't justified by its 2010 revenue run rate ("The site made $243.1 million in 2010, with net income of $15.4 million.") But, Bizo's Russ Glass puts it into "B2B perspective" in a piece on Forbes saying this is all good news: "A B2B-focused marketing company on the leading edge has finally broken through and created a mainstream – and dare I say sexy – company in the business space." Sex sells! Read more. Are ad tech IPOs on the way? 100%. Who will be the first?

More Microsoft Ad Exchange

The Microsoft Advertising blog is alive and well with Microsoft Ad Exchange news as MSFT display guru Dennis Buchheim says "all non-guaranteed MSN and Fox Sports inventory is now available through the Microsoft Advertising Exchange in the U.S., joining the Windows Live non-guaranteed U.S. inventory that we announced in March." Fox! An interesting combo as perhaps Microsoft and News Corp are teaming up (let's stir it up, shall we?!!!). As you may recall, News Corp recently sold Fox Audience Network (and its RTB solution from Strategic Data Corp) to Rubicon Project and placed a bet on RP, too. Both Rubicon and Google seem to be servicing the dwindling MySpace inventory from recent reports. Will Rupert Murdoch play the Microsoft Ad Exchange card to thwart the Google freight train? Choo choo!

Old Dogs Get New Clients

aiMatch has fancy new analytics for its ad server according to a story by Laurie Sullivan in MediaPost. Also, the company announced that it added clients Healthnews, Midwest Communications and Photobucket, whose CEO Darren Kelly commented in regards to aiMatch execs: "They are the old dogs who began the ad-serving business. One day they woke up and decided to try it again, but build in better tools." Woof, woof!

Fear Digital

Julie Roehm returns to iMedia Connection with a think piece titled "A newbie's guide to surviving digital." The consultant/marketer says that we all need to "make fear your friend and beware the status quo." Isn't that the truth? She says that "we have become a society that has learned to run to the status quo and away from things that make us afraid, when instead we should learn to embrace the emotion and use it to push us forward." Love fear here.

Facebook's Plan For Brands

Facebook has been targeting brand dollars as ClickZ's Christopher Heine reports on new strategies: "Facebook and Nielsen are creating a new household data panel designed to help CPG advertisers on the social site measure offline conversion on a custom basis." It seems the two ocmpanies are in cahoots to discover something akin to TV buying metric favorite, the GRP. Will it be the SRP - social rating point? Nobody is saying quite yet. But Nielsen and Facebook did say they would be discovering offline transactions through surveys. Read more. When are the Facebook chip implants coming?

Former Omniture CEO Stays Stealthy, Remains Wealthy

Josh James say he's collected a big bag of cash from A-list investors even though he didn't need it for his new startup which has something to do with data -but he's not saying exactly according to The Wall Street Journal. Here's what he did say according to the WSJ's Don Clark: "Where Omniture helped companies track how many people were clicking on which of their Web pages, James wants to provide a more useful tool for CEOs or other managers to track what is going on in their businesses." Web cams! Read more.

Not Just DR Anymore

Infectious Media announced it was taking its trading desk to the brand marketer with a series of new real-time bidding-enabled products "named: Aware, Acquire, Retarget, and X and Up, [which] feature the company’s proprietary technology, Impression Desk." Read more.

10 Big Lies

AppNexus product maven Ari Paparo offers his top 10 for the "biggest lies of online advertising" on his personal blog. Coming in at the #5 lie: "Display Needs to be More Like Search." Paparo writes, "Fixing display doesn’t mean making it more like search, unless by that you mean giving Google total control of the ecosystem. Oh whoops, that already happened." Read more.

Snakes In A DSP

Invite Media co-founder Nat Turner discusses his life as an entrepreneur in a video interview on CNN and reveals he had four hundred snakes in his bedroom in his early days. Things have been looking up since then - especially after Nat and Co. sold Invite to Google last June. See the interview and the plush Google offices.

Infographic Friday

Local-advertising-check-in-machine Foursquare is the basis for some sweet infographica in a piece in the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ writes about the data, "We collected every check-in on location-sharing service Foursquare for a week starting at noon Eastern on Friday, Jan. 21 until noon on Friday Jan. 28. Foursquare, which provided the data, removed all material that could identify an individual user." See "where women and men go."